Michigan means farming, fishing and the great outdoors. But the landscape itself is being transformed by a newer cash crop: houses.

With its cherries, apples, wine grapes, blueberries, soybeans, wheat, milo and corn; cattle, sheep, hogs, and horses, Michigan is second only to California in the range of unique food products we grow. Likewise, the lumber industry, which once yielded a higher profit than the California Gold Rush, is also a thriving industry in the state. Recreation and tourism, including hiking, biking, boating and camping, brings in billions in revenue to the state each year.

But take a drive to the outskirts of your own community, and you'll likely see new houses being built on what was just yesterday farmland or forests. Michigan's towns don't really stop and start anymore — they just get more spread out. New houses or stores dot the highways and roads until you're not sure if you're in the country or the city. If you look around your own community, you might think the most profitable crop these days must be single-family houses. Preferably in beige.

Sprawling development, which consumes land at a rate far beyond our population needs, has converted thousands of acres of Michigan land which would have been better suited to farming, forestry, or tourism. Land we depend on for our livelihoods is disappearing every day.

Prime farmland, for example, sells fast and easy these days, in large part because the housing market drives up the price of beautiful fields far beyond the money a farmer can make by growing anything on it. Farmers are struggling, and can make more by selling land to a developer than by growing soybeans or cows. Statewide, if current development trends continue, Michigan will lose 15 percent of 1.49 million acres of farmland by 2040. Similarly, forest and recreational lands are disappearing almost as fast. Overall, our state's open space is becoming smaller, more fragmented, and harder to get to.

The problem is urban sprawl, and the policies that drive it. We need to recognize that current tax policy, the building of new roads and sewers, and a host of other policies are costing us much of the most valuable and unique land in Michigan. It's time to realize that it's not necessary what we grow, but where we grow it. There's a proper place for houses and businesses — and farmland and prime forests is not it.

Read on to learn more about the People and Land being affected by sprawl.